Imagining “whiteness” : an ethnographic exploration into fantasy and experience of young women (and men) seeking bazungu partners in Kampala, Uganda

In one of Uganda’s main national newspapers, the New Vision, women and men advertise that they seek ‘white’ partners. Using emergent design, this study set out to explore this yearning for local – ‘white’ relationships. I conducted exploratory and semi-structured interviews with 20 of these women and men. As I started conducting the interviews, it became clear that this was a topic which provoked emotionally charged responses and a great deal of ‘identity work’, with participants identifying with, or disidentifying from, particular groups and categories, notably ‘prostitutes’ and ‘traditional’, ‘cultural’ or ‘modern’ women and men. Engaging critically with post-colonial writings and contemporary feminist research, I argue that my respondents provided important insights into the broader dynamics of gender, sexuality, race and power, as well as processes of identity construction in post-colonial Uganda. I explore the fantasy constructions and stereotypes perpetuating beliefs in ‘white’ superiority and address the various influences upon which respondents draw to bolster constructions of ‘whites’ as superior. These are marked by explicit beliefs in racial hierarchy, as well as ‘modernisation’ and ‘developmental’ discourses which positively associate ‘modernisation’ with ‘Westernisation.’ I discuss respondents’ negative constructions of local, ‘black’ men and women born out of past experiences with local partners. Male respondents expressed frustration with Ugandan women, whom they constructed as ‘money minded’, whom they believe forfeit dignity, for love of money, in their search for modernity. ‘Tradition’ and ‘culture’ were often invoked by men against women, who were seen as failing to live up to presumed cultural standards of femininity. I also explore female respondents’ appeals to ‘tradition’ and ‘culture’ which they feel benefit Ugandan men to the detriment of women and romantic relationships. I show that female respondents draw on discourses of Western ‘modernity’ and human rights, to illustrate the extent of gendered inequalities in Uganda, and find that Western humanism, embodied in the ‘white’ male, is constructed as a solution to their relationship dilemmas.

Publisher: Stellenbosch University
Year of Publication: 2013